There’s been a lot written about Boiler Room’s involvement with Notting Hill Carnival and its future funding from Arts Council England’s Ambition For Excellence programme to produce a film about the event. I do not intend to rehearse those discussions here. There have been many valid points raised on both sides of the argument. Rather, I want to address some serious issues that this fiasco raises about the role of public money in funding the arts in England. My contention here is not only that Arts Council England’s funding of Boiler Room does not meet the goals of the Ambition For Excellence programme, but that it also does not support their Creative Case for Diversity objectives either. Rather, it reinforces colonialism and white, upper and middle-class privilege. Indeed, this funding represents the deeply neoliberal agenda of turning art into a globally-marketed consumer product.

COLOURING IN CULTURE

A blog by PhD researcher, art historian, curator, writer, activist and community arts practitioner Stephen Pritchard about art, activism and politics in the place where we live.

My research covers participation in art and culture spanning from everyday creativity, participatory art, socially engaged art and social practice to social praxis, political art and activist art; from state instrumentalisation to carnivalesque freedom.